John L. Work is a veteran of twenty years of Colorado law enforcement service and a graduate of Cal State Long Beach, B.A. and M.A. He has been a contributor and featured columnist for NewsRealBlog since January of 2010, and a guest columnist for FrontPageMagazine.

So, I know what you’re wondering. Who’s the old man with the beard in the above portrait? He was Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, inventor of the telescope, astronomer, lecturer, and author. In 1633 he was indicted, jailed, interrogated, prosecuted, convicted by a jury of ten Roman Catholic Cardinals and ordered into prison by the Pope. Galileo’s crime was that he wrote a five-hundred page book, in which he presented scientific evidence clearly demonstrating that the Earth was not at the center of the Universe.

But the idea was blasphemy.

Europe will witness another heresy trial in Amsterdam on January 20th. The defendant is Geert Wilders, an elected member of the Dutch Parliament. Wilders’ prosecution for crimes which include Inciting Hatred (which can be read as “Insulting Islam”) arise from Muslim objections to, and political pressure against, his fifteen minute movie “Fitna.” The film shows Koranic scriptures and depicts corresponding acts of Muslim violence against infidels. Wilders’ film speaks powerfully against the relentless Islamification of The Netherlands and of Europe. If convicted he faces up to two years in prison. It will sound the death knell for Freedom in The Western World. Freedom, itself, is now about to be tried in The Netherlands.

“I cannot overestimate the epochal importance of the court proceeding taking place next Wednesday the 20th in the Netherlands where Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders goes on trial for an array of charges that arises from his courageous and increasingly successful efforts to lead his countrymen against the Islamization of their country and the wider West. A man of political action, Wilders has been targeted not just for his political speech, but for his effectiveness as an advocate of liberty and pluralism, neither of which can survive in societies that are governed by, or in thrall to sharia (Islamic law)…

… He is equally if almost singularly outspoken about the political remedies necessary to halt the extension of Islam’s law. Such remedies include stopping Islamic immigration and deporting agents of jihad…

…It is a political trial, then, in the worst sense, that we are about to witness. And it is about more than the future of freedom of speech. The trial of Geert Wilders is about the future of freedom.”

You will probably not see any coverage of this abomination in the American Press Corps, which long ago joined hands with the political Left and with Islam.

The Forces of Islam, through mass immigration and Stealth Jihad, have reached a population of critical mass in Europe, the point at which European governments fear the threats of Muslim mob violence more than they fear losing their hard-won freedoms – freedom wrested at gunpoint from the cruel hands of despots, and by the bloodshed of men and women who sacrificed their lives for the liberties that many Americans now take for granted.

Wilders truthfully speaks out to keep Europe free from the horrors of encroaching Sharia. Galileo spoke to scientific fact. The trial of Geert Wilders, like that of Galileo Galilei, is indeed the Trial of the Millennium. And the verdict may very well decide the ultimate fate of the Western World.